Backwards focus association

The interpretation of focus-sensitive operators such as ‘only’ and ‘even’ depends on the presence of a focused constituent in their scope. In my dissertation, I describe the complex conditions under which focus-sensitive operators are able to associate with a focused constituent which has moved out of their scope. In particular, I concentrate on the ability of English ‘even’ but not ‘only’ to associate “backwards” in this configuration. I propose a theory based on the Copy Theory of movement which predicts the attested patterns of backwards association. When an operator gives the appearance of associating backwards, it is in fact associating with focus in the lower copy of the movement chain, within its scope. Differences in the availability of backwards association between ‘only,’ ‘even,’ and ‘also’ are shown to follow from independent semantic differences. The proposal explains a range of constraints on patterns of focus association, and more generally contributes to our understanding of the interaction of the syntactic operation of movement with the semantic and information-structural notion of focus. My proposal also forms a new argument against the so-called “scope theory” of ‘even’.

Focus association by movement

Under the influential Roothian proposal for focus association, focused phrases remain in-situ at LF (Rooth, 1985, 1992). However, a recent line of work has resurrected the idea that focus association involves covert movement: specifically, the associate of English sentential only must covertly move to only (Drubig, 1994; Krifka, 1996, 2006; Tancredi, 1997, 2004; Wagner, 2006). Hadas Kotek and I have developed new arguments for this idea that association with English sentential only involves covert focus movement, with the possibility of pied-piping. We show that covert pied-piping in focus association explains previously unnoticed patterns of island-sensitivity in Tanglewood constructions (Kratzer, 1991) as well as patterns of focus intervention effects in focus constructions. We also show that covert focus movement can feed reflexive binding and parasitic gap licensing.

Multiple association configurations

Although canonical examples of focus association involve one focus-sensitive operator associating with one focused constituent, more complex configurations are also attested. Based on such examples, I propose a framework for the compositional semantics of focus that differs minimally from Rooth 1992 in letting focus-sensitive operators optionally pass up evaluated focus alternatives. This framework successfully accounts for the behavior of structures involving multiple association with a single focus, multiple overlapping associations with separate foci, focus intervention effects in wh-questions, and focus association with wh-phrases. The framework also allows us to maintain the idea due to Beck (2006) that alternatives computed for the semantics of questions (Hamblin 1973 a.o.) and of focus (Rooth 1985 a.o.) are formally identical objects, defusing the argument in Li & Law 2016 against such unification.

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